massandra winery

Spend 3 days in Yalta, and visiting Massandra winery was amazing. Great wines, amazing history. Thanks again for every thing!

Massandra Winery has its main winery along with the Massandra palace, but there are also wine-tasting halls of the winery located in Alupka, on the way to the Vorontsov Palace. The only reason you might go there is because it's really cheap and in a weird way it recreates the socialist retro of the 70s. For three euros you get to try ten different wines, 200 ml altogether. No water provided, I mean, I understand, given the price, but there isn't even an option to buy some small nibbles as palate cleansers. I have to say I didn't like the wines very much. Dry ones I've tasted tasted like cheap table wines, the sweeter went from Madeira diluted with water through Madeira less diluted with water to very sweet and sticky grape juice fortified with some alcohol. And I loved Port wines, but these just aren't crafted really well.So as I've said earlier, why go? It's cheap and the atmosphere is a weird socialist vintage... Go for a bizarre experience.

This was well worth seeing. You get to walk around a beautiful old winery in picturesque setting, understand the history, see cellars with some VERY old wines, understand the production process (the pipes are what amazed me - I always imagined buckets!), and then taste them. It is probably one of the few places in the former USSR where activities haven't changed that much since Royal times. The grandeur is still there even if for the peoples' benefit and even if the tour includes lines like "In Soviet Times, Good wine was accessible to all citizens."IMHO most of the wines were fairly vile but the Port was awesome. Take a translator though! Our was all in Russian and right now there aren't too many English speaking tourists there so I doubt that will change in the medium term.

There are a lot of wineries in Crimea, but Massandra is definitely the oldest! The most interesting in the 1 hour Massandra tour is their old wine collection. The founder of this winery, prince Golyitsyn, started to collect his enoteca back in XIX century, and now they have a lot of very very old bottles with wine. But they do not tell about wine making proccess in difference to Inkerman winery in Sevastopol. Massandra wine is quite strange, very sweet and always fortified. If you like french or italian dry wines you will be surprised. If you have 2 or 3 ours in Yalta you should go there.

Went to the winery as part of a cruise ship tour, although there were only about eight of us on the tour. The winery was very busy with a number of tours going on and the shop being extremely crowded. The winery, which is the largest in the Crimea area, has a long history being funded by Tsar Nicholas II. Interestingly given environment and tastes, they produce mainly sweet or desert type wines, but have something like 70 varietals. The winery is Massandra and is about 20 mins outside town. We were taken on a guided tour of the facility in Russian translated to English. The tour was pretty standard with barrels, bottles, and tanks. The tour itself did not reveal much info, but if you ask many questions (as we did) you can get much more detail. We then were able to do a tasting of nine different wines. The first was one of their few dry wines which they claimed to be a Cabernet but if it was, it was the lightest cab I have ever had. The next eight wines were all various types of sweet wines. The first couple had high alcohol and low sugar and were very forgettable, a sentiment shared by all tasters in our group. Then came some more familiar names with a Maderia, a Port, and a sweet wine from Pinot Gris…all of these were again OK but still not much real flavor except for the Pinot. Then a Hungarian style Tokai which was very good. All leading up to the wineries signature wine which is Moscato at 13% alcohol and 23% sugar, for which they have won a number of gold and silver medals. Only real down note, was when leaving and trying to buy a bottle in the winery store, we were very clearly being ignored in deference to Russian/Ukraine folks even those who had arrived long after us...was finally able to get a bottle but took some perseverance. Overall, for folks interested in wines, this winery provides a real perspective on this Crimean region although the wines themselves were not generally worth going out of the way for. If you do want to purchase wine there, it is extremely cheap with even the most expensive varieties going for not much more than around $12 per bottle.

Excellent place to spend 2-3 hours of hot day at Yalta. Specially if like Massandra wines.. Take the full tour. You will not be bored..

If you like wine, go to visit the Massandra Winery. Mind, it is not very close to the city centre, so you have to take a taxi, trolley-bus or bus. The bus stop is closer to the entrance so it's preferable. Only guided tours are allowed and you can choose an option with wine tasting or without. I'm not sure if they offer tours in English, we had a Russian speaking guide and it was really interesting. We were shown all around the place, including modern production facilities and wine sellars with their rich collection of wines. It was really impressing to see the French wines dated back to 1700, all covered in dust. The tasting was interesting too and afterwards you can buy the wine you tasted in their shop. It's enough to give the number. Other wines are on sale as well. All of them are sweet wines, Porto o Jeres type and are surprisingly good. There's a bar where you can have something to eat too.

If you don’t speak Russian there is quite a lot of chat which you don’t understand before you get to taste anything. Much better to go with a local guide that speaks your language and then tag on to the tour and get translation. Interesting stories on how they managed to preserve the extensive and old collection through the war and other troubled times.The good wines here are predominantly sweet and made in styles that copy those from other parts of the world such as sweet and dry sherry and Madeira. However there are some unique local styles such as sweet pinot gris, the black doctor and pink muscat plus many others as the entire range is extensive.The best thing is many restaurants offer extensive lists of these wines in 50 and 100ml sizes so it’s easy to do your own wine tasting and figure out which styles you like. Most wines are not that expensive unless you venture into the old vintages and you can buy wines from the 1940s if your pockets are deep enough.

Take your time and enjoy the atmosphere. Please, consider that wines in that area are very sweet. Taking this into consideration, you will enjoy the tasting. I will suggest the 10-options (enough for still being able to drive back hotel). Very cheap experience and ask for some nuts/bread before drinking.

Very old and well organised winery with it is chateau type of building will definatelly suprise you. They mostly produce Porto type of sweet wines and some of them are really tasty and compatible with the ones produced in Porto . Make your reservation and make your winery tour with tasting experience.

I visited the Winery with my friends and enjoyed it much more than I expected.I often travel independently in Ukraine and so I'm used to Russian-only tour guides. I follow what I can with my limited Russian or just zone-out and enjoy my own, less informed, private tour.The wine tasting was great but I'd like to understand the commentary a little more. The best I could do was to taste the right number (1-20) at the right time. The actual tour was fantastic: the serene court yard; the long row of casks; the ancient vintages. Check out the 1775 section and consider what was happening while the 1917 grapes were being harvested.We bought a nice bottle from my friend's birth year. Mine was too expensive!

My wife and I visited the Massandra Winery in Yalta a couple years ago. It has a fascinating history and really added charm to an already beautiful place. We did not have plans to go originally, but at a local bazaar, we found a good price for tickets and a shuttle and decided to do it. It was a roughly a 40 minute shuttle ride up, through and around the mountain. Once there, we waited for the next tour (approx 30 minutes). It gave us time to walk around the scenic property. Plenty of photo opportunities and also a chance to learn about the Winery's history. Once our time came, the tour guide led us through the operation and finally to a banquet hall for the wine tasting. We had a great time tasting the many different wines with an instruction on how each was made. The different wines were excellent and as self described - novice wine tasters, we enjoyed the experience. We would recommend this to our friends. The only thing to be aware of is that the tour it is in Russian - no English. If you do not speak or know someone who does, you will probably not really understand the history or wine making process. But if you don't speak, don't worry because the wine tasting alone was worth the trip. We also recommend buying a couple bottles of the sweet red wine or the Modera

I visited this winery in November of this year.I enjoyed the tour and the best part was sampling about 10 wines at the end of the tour.The only draw back is the tour guides speak russian and not english although you can get an idea of what they are talking about.It is well worth the tour and should you wish to buy a bottle of wine it works out a little cheaper to buy it from their shop at the winery rather than from downtown Yalta.I stayed at the Bristol Hotel in Yalta which I can recommend for the budget concious and they had a good stock of Massandra wines in their bar at a reasonable price.

Wines are great! And the excursion was quite interesting. We've bought a bottle of white muskat wine special edition and now it's our favourite! I think everyone can find something for himself, the amount of kinds to choose from is huge. The Crimean peninsula is perfect for the winery

Приезжали на дегустацию вин. Дегустационный сет состоит из 9 вин. Начинается все с полусладкого красного столового вина и заканчивается ликерным вином Мускат белый. В магазинчике можно купить понравившееся на дегустации. И не только.